Oil and Gas
Failure is inevitable,
yet unacceptable.
Every transformer in every oil and gas facility is operating under stress it was not designed for. Aging insulation. Elevated ambient temperatures. High harmonic loading from variable-frequency drives. Continuous duty cycles with no relief intervals.
The industry knows this. The operators know this. As one O&G asset manager described it: “We know they’ll fail. They’re set up to fail. We just want to know when.”
VIE answers that question months before the failure event, continuously, without interrupting operations.
The Industry’s Biggest Risk Is Not Asset Failure.
It's Decision Latency.
Data exists across every transformer fleet in oil and gas. Most of it arrives too late to act on. Periodic oil tests, annual inspections, and infrared thermography all share the same problem: they sample a transformer at a fixed moment, then leave the asset unmonitored for weeks or months.
In upstream, midstream, and downstream environments, that blind interval is where failures develop. Winding looseness builds between sample windows. Insulation degrades between inspection cycles. Partial discharge escalates between visits. By the time a scheduled test catches any of these, the repair window is often already closing, measured against a 3 to 5 year transformer replacement timeline.
There is a second problem compounding the first. The engineers who know how to read these signals are leaving. Workforce attrition is removing the institutional knowledge that O&G transformer programs have historically depended on. Facilities that remain dependent on human expertise for condition assessment are carrying a risk that compounds every year.
VIE addresses both. It provides continuous, autonomous transformer intelligence that does not wait for a scheduled test or a senior engineer’s interpretation. Detection happens months ahead of failure. The monitoring record builds automatically.
3 to 6 months
That is the typical lead time between
a VIE detection and a failure event.
The Transition Oil & Gas Operations Are Already Making
Every major oil and gas operator is moving from reactive asset management to continuously informed field intelligence. Workforce attrition and aging infrastructure have made that transition overdue. The question is no longer whether to make it. The question is how fast.
From
- Threshold alarms that trigger only when failure has already begun
- Periodic testing with long blind intervals between samples
- Siloed asset data with no fleet-level context across distributed sites
- Reactive maintenance cycles driven by failure events and production stoppages
To
- Early failure mode identification weeks to months before the failure event
- 24/7 visibility with no blind spots between inspection cycles or site visits
- Fleet-wide health data across onshore, offshore, and pipeline infrastructure
- Predictive maintenance planning that schedules work during production windows, not around them
What VIE Delivers for Oil and Gas
VIE converts transformer fleet management from a reactive process into a continuous operating system. The platform builds a virtual model from each transformer’s geometry and refines it with every sample — detecting deviation from expected behavior months before failure, in every operating environment from a remote wellpad to an offshore platform.
Every Oil and Gas Environment.
One Platform.
VIE is certified for and deployed across the full range of oil and gas operating environments.
VIE sensors are ATEX/IECEx certified for deployment in hazardous area environments. Full certification documentation is available upon request.
Extraction — Onshore
Continuous transformer monitoring for land-based production facilities, wellpads, and compression stations — including remote sites with no existing network infrastructure.
Extraction — Offshore
Non-invasive monitoring for platform and FPSO transformer assets. VIE sensors connect via LTE or satellite. No platform network required.
Refineries
Fleet-wide visibility across the transformer infrastructure that keeps refinery operations continuous. Early detection of the thermal and electrical fault modes most common in high-load, high-ambient-temperature environments.
LNG Facilities
Monitoring for LNG processing and liquefaction transformer assets, where a failure event carries production, safety, and regulatory consequences beyond equipment cost alone.
Pipeline — Upstream, Midstream, and Downstream
Distributed fleet monitoring across linear infrastructure. VIE’s gateway connects via LTE or satellite, making remote and unmanned pipeline sites fully monitorable without site visits.
Early Detection Is the
Only Variable You Control
In oil and gas, transformer failure does not produce a billing dispute or an SLA credit. It produces a production stoppage, an uncontrolled shutdown, or in the worst cases, an ignition risk. The consequences extend from equipment cost into safety, environmental, and regulatory territory that no maintenance budget fully covers.
A typical catastrophic transformer failure in O&G costs $2 to $5 million in direct impact. Depending on the application — offshore platform, LNG terminal, continuous-process refinery — that figure can be significantly higher.
VIE detects electrical, mechanical, and thermal failure modes 3 to 6 months before the failure event — in every environment, on every transformer type, without de-energization.
Built for Classified Locations
VIE sensors are ATEX/IECEx certified for use in hazardous area environments — the certification that determines whether a monitoring system can legally operate in classified O&G locations.
Deployment requires no modification to transformer internals, no de-energization, and no interruption to operations. The gateway connects via LTE or satellite from day one. No site network. No IT team. No integration project.
Contact VIE for full certification documentation, zone and category applicability, and any site-specific installation guidance for your operating context.
By the Numbers
Transformers monitored globally
Typical lead time before failure event
ROI delivered in months (KPMG-validated)
Installation per transformer, no de-energization
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes. VIE sensors are ATEX/IECEx certified for use in hazardous area environments. Contact VIE for full certification documentation and zone and category applicability details for your specific installation context.
Yes. The VIE gateway connects to the cloud via LTE or satellite. No existing network infrastructure is required at the site. VIE operates continuously in remote onshore locations, offshore platforms, and distributed pipeline infrastructure without requiring a site visit for data retrieval.
VIE establishes a machine health baseline for each monitored asset within 30 days of sensor installation. From that point forward, the platform refines its models continuously as operating data accumulates.
No. VIE sensors install on the external surface of any transformer — the transformer stays fully energized throughout. No de-energization. No modification to internals. No production interruption. One transformer takes under 30 minutes.
No. VIE detects mechanical and electrical failure modes that dissolved gas analysis (DGA) cannot capture. Lab DGA identifies chemical degradation that vibration monitoring does not cover. The two methods are complementary. VIE gives operators a reason to use lab DGA more strategically — targeted to specific assets, at specific moments — rather than on a fixed schedule.
The Question Is Not Whether. The Question Is When.
Every unmonitored transformer in your fleet is carrying a failure that has not announced itself yet. In O&G, the announcement comes with a price — in production, in safety, and in the repair bill that follows.
VIE is deployed today across 800+ transformers globally. One sensor failure and zero gateway failures since launch.